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Web Developer, Web Designer, SEO Person...what do I need?

I was short on fund for my company when I set up my website. I used a company that was just starting to get into website design and they charged very little. Now that I'm starting to pursue different forms of SEO it has come to my attention (because of SEOmoz reporting) that my website wasn't coded correctly on the backend.

For instance the website sometimes uses a trailing slash in the the URL and sometimes it doesn't. This redirects it and creates a duplicate content issue.

I need to find someone to audit/evaluate (I guess that's the word) the backend of my website and reprogram it where there are problems. I need to make sure my site is set up in the best way possible to be crawled by search engines.

What type of firm do I talk to? A website designer or web developer? Or do I talk to a SEO person who also can code the backend of websites?

2 Responses

I haven't looked at your site, because I don't want this post to come over in the wrong way. Here's my opinion

Get an SEO to do a website audit and get a comprehensive list of issues that need fixing

Get a developer on board who can deal with the platform/CMS your site is built on to fix the errors they feel qualified to do and to leave ones they don't.

Go back to the SEO who did the audit to complete the rest, because if they're not web people, to be useful in SEO then they should know web people to help.

If you can find one company you can trust who have both web and SEO skills in-house that's even better for efficiency. But go meet with some first to give yourself some options and then make a decision. Some time and thought will help you make a good decision as to who to hire and why.

There are one hell of a lot of designers and programmers/ developers out there that are great at what they do but have no idea about other aspects such as SEO (infact especially SEO).

If your on a budget then there will be a lot of work that you can do yourself to fix the issues, it will just take time and effort on your behalf to find them and learn how to fix the issues. There is one hell of a lot of information and know how out there on the web .. use SEOmoz reports to identify the problems and then do the research on how to fix the issue.

I started my web business up in exactly the same way as you, and now I too am having to do the same work.. so far all done in house but soon i will have to outsource for the real fine detail.

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